Crafting Social Identity in Ur III Southern Mesopotamia Rita P. Wright New York Univeristy ABSTRACT During the Ur III period in southern Mesopotamia, artisans were engaged in the production of crafts that required enormous technical skill and yet craft production appears not to have been an avenue to prestige and power. This paper draws on archival records from artisan workshops and literary sources to demonstrate the intricate fusion of a powerful political ideology and arigidlycontrolled economy in which rulers legitimated their authority at the same time that they suppressed the mobility of craft producers. The establishment of a wide range of economic, social and legal differentiation was based on a state strategy designed to promote efficiency and to achieve control of artisan production. Craft producers during this period negotiated their social identity in a variety of domains that were legal, kinship, ethnic and gender based. INTRODUCTION The study of craft production and its relation- ship to social identity is rarely problematized in ar- chaeological reconstructions of past societies, al- though underlying many investigations is the assump- tion that crafts mediate social identity. In state level societies, in particular, archaeologists have made a distinction between producers who are independent specialists (artisans who control the production and distribution of their goods) and attached specialists (artisans who do not control the production and distribution of their goods) (cf Tosi 1984, Brumfiel and Earle 1987, Clark and Parry 1990, Costin, 1991, Clark 1995, Wright 1991a,b, 1996a). Underlying these distinctions is the notion that producers acting as in- dependent artisans are empowered by engagement in their craft. Speciali2ation, technical skill and the value of products affect their social and economic status and reflect on social identity. These material manifestations of economic status, although powerful indicators, must be rec- onciled with societal values and in this paper, I evalu- ate the relationship between artisanship and social identity during the Ur III period in southern Mesopotamia. Documents from temple and pal- ace archives from this period indicate that the inde- pendent/attached dichotomy wrongly compartmen- talizes craft organization. Ur III is a particularly com- pelling case, since although it was one of the most highly centralized states and rulers maintained a tight control on the political economy, forms of labor organization varied. The political and economic organization of the Ur III dynasty was based on a complex administra- tive structure in which practically all of material life was categorized and codified. Particularly relevant to discussions of artisans and social identity are me- ticulously kept accounts of labor, production ca- pacities and daily activities in craft workshops. They provide a complex picture of the different statuses held by artisans and make it possible to flesh out how specialization and craft production "worked" as markers of social identity. In addition to economic considerations, soci- etal values are key to an understanding of the im- pact of artisanship on social identity. I, therefore, also examine literary sources in order to gain insights into Mesopotamian conceptions of artisanship. As Piotr Michalowski (1987:68) has demonstrated, po- litical domination in the Ur III state, though based in part on force and economic power, centered on a
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